Back in November last year, we wrote about Yemas, a release by Oregon-based musician Yaara Valey (then recording as Indira Valey) on Antiquated Future Records. The record was a “fusion of ethereal melodies, poetic writing and a whole range of textures and tones,” we wrote, “layered over one another in translucent layers like ghostly strata of bygone times.” The effect was one of ritual, each song offering glimpses into alternate dimensions, be they located in the past, future or some adjacent present.
This autumn saw Yaara Valey return with Deshecha, a new EP of otherworldly, mostly instrumental tracks that continues this process, offering new views of some other side through disassembly of the established reality. Opener ‘May We’ captures this spirit, atmospheric and inherently natural, as though the songs do not conjure a soundscape so much as tap into something already in existence. A cleansing rite encoded not only in the title of the release—deshecha, undone—but in the titles of the songs themselves. May we be undone to be empty again and surrender.
After the slow dawn of ‘Be Undone To’ with its lurking latent energy, ‘Be Empty’ adds Valey’s voice and with it a new kind of urgency. For instead of words, Valey offers sounds, syllables, instinctive noises as they arise from the mouth and throat. The result is the antithesis of gibberish, the soulful vocals possessing meaning beyond words, instinctive within the sound itself.
[bandcamp width=100% height=120 album=2051259525 size=large bgcol=ffffff linkcol=0687f5 tracklist=false artwork=small track=934004173]
The style follows through to it’s most overtly spiritual form on ‘Again’, a wordless hymn that conjures something from the air. Ghosts or something similar flitting around the track like moths to a flame, the climax of the ceremony that is the EP itself. Closer ‘And Surrender’ is therefore like the aftermath, a track newborn and tender, arising from the purged space free of the weight of history, its future its own.
With Deshecha, Yaara Valey explores the strangely intuitive duality between expansiveness and intimacy. Open spaces made personal, or the personal made open. The result is political in the most pressing sense, and spiritual in the least ostentatious—a spirituality that emerges from the textures of things, a newfound belief that has always been present to those who care to look.
Deshecha is out now via Antiquated Future Records and you can get it from Bandcamp.